My review of past box-office performance shows little correlation between ?star vehicles? and hits. Looking at last year?s top 100 films at the U.S. box office (excluding animated pictures, which don?t succeed or fail because of movie stars? voices, and sequels, which shouldn?t count as star vehicles), I see 21 starless films that, given their reported production budgets, probably made money. The list includes Thor, Planet of the Apes, Captain America, The Help, Bridesmaids, Super 8, Immortals, War Horse, and Dolphin Tale. Using that same criteria, I see 21 star vehicles (movies led by someone who, in the recent past, had starred in another hit movie) that made money. Then I looked at the probable money-losers in the top 100. As far as I can tell, there was just one starless movie that lost money, Sucker Punch, while there were sixteen money-losers with touted, proven names, including Cowboys & Aliens, Red Riding Hood, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. If you go back ten years before that, you?ll see a similar dispersal of winners to losers with the first Fast and the Furious, Save the Last Dance, and Legally Blonde (the movie that made Reese Witherspoon a star) in the win column and Jennifer Lopez?s Angel Eyes, Jim Carrey?s The Majestic, and Martin Lawrence?s What?s the Worst That Can Happen? going the other way. Ten years before that, Fried Green Tomatoes was a big hit and Robert De Niro?s Guilty by Suspicion was a huge bomb.